Last week, I participated as a judge for the Global Social Venture Competition. For those who are unfamiliar with this event, think big baking contest. Then, replace the act of baking with a crazy insane business plan that will help change the world… or just a little piece of it.
I read five Executive Summaries in total and three of them have some legs. I’m actually amazed at all the good ideas in the world. I thought we’d run out of ideas by now. Anyway, it was a fantastic experience. After a mini-talk from John Danner (a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship) about evaluation criteria, my fellow judges and I dug right into the business plans.
One thing I learned from the experience is that it takes more than a good idea to change the world. In fact, after reading over 20 business plans (some successful, some not) over the past quarter, I’ve learned that the plans that resonated with me the most were the ones that quickly sold the idea, but immediately told me how the company is going to get there. I’m sure this is intuitive for most people, but I can’t recall how many Executive Summaries had crazy fluff… and these are PhDs and MBAs that are ten times smarter than me from way better schools… I need to know how you’re going to make the magic happen! C’mon, now.
The main reason that I opted for judging this year is because I eventually want to enter the competition. In fact, I really really want to win it (it just sounds so wrong, but I have to be honest!). I read the Executive Summary of a company that won several years ago, World of Good, and I was blown away. WOG is an awesome (and now exploding) company that sells globally-sourced goods from artisans into mainstream channels. When I was reading the business plan, all I could think about was how fantastic it was to start a consumer product company that gave back to the world. After almost six years in big box retail, it was hard to see how good can come from making people buy lots and lots of stuff. (Okay, I’m getting a bit idealistic now, so I’ll get back on point.)
I also honed my skills at evaluating business plans. I think the qualitative and strategic aspects (“the big picture that VCs love to hear) of Executive Summaries were more up my alley, but I also liked using some quantitative tools too. It was particularly helpful to use “Pers” analysis for all my evaluations. I broke down most of the services to a cost per single unit– it helped me quickly assess whether or not a project made intuitive sense. I spoke to my fellow judges and they also found the Pers analysis to be super helpful– after all, the numbers in Executive Summaries are usually very optimistic and are loaded with lots of assumptions (even for moderately-established businesses). I mean, can someone really estimate the GDP of Angola in five years?
The most interesting aspect of judging was using an extra lens that I normally don’t put into assessing business plans/projects: social impact. I think social impact to entrepreneurship is like monetization to social media companies (random analogy, but I have very limited knowledge!). You know you need to measure social impact in tangible terms, but the metrics can seem a bit arbitrary. Some businesses proposed using reduced waste to landfill or productivity gains as social impact metrics. Others were a bit more creative like measuring carbon dioxide emissions from farting cows or funky algae.
To sum everything up, I think the GSVC really opened my eyes to what is possible out there. I ultimately know that my passions lie in media, education, and technology, but my expertise is focused on media strategy/CRM, strategy, and marketing. I’m just wondering how everything can co-exist.
